Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 25, 2025
The Captain and Orderly-Sergeant took an occasional look at them until they passed the picket-line, when other more pressing matters engaged the officers' attention. The stampeded guards, mounted on mules or condemned horses, or running on foot, came tearing back, each with a prodigious tale of the numbers and ferocity of the rebels.
He wrote us soldier letters from the Presidio, and from mid-ocean, and from the picket-line in front of Manila. One afternoon the messenger-boy came in snuffling with a sheet of the Press-report. David's name was among the killed. Then we turned the column rules on the first page and got out the paper early to give the town the news.
He entertained us most hospitably for an hour or so, and then, accompanied by a lieutenant, who was to be our guide, I set out ahead of my companions to gain a point on the picket-line where I expected to get a good look at the French, for their rifle-pits were but a few hundred yards off across the Marne, their main line being just behind the rifle-pits.
The Spanish army is at "the front," posted across or partly across the island on a sort of strong picket-line, fortified by block-houses, whence watch is kept on the movements of the insurgents, who seem to come and go as they please in the Spanish front, and cross the lines with impunity.
But how scattered and feeble that picket-line compared to the army which was soon to follow it. For a season, and while the British were trying to force their yoke on the reluctant colonists, the westward movement had a check. The danger was in the rear.
When advancing or retreating in line of battle, the usual skirmish-line constitutes the picket-line, and may have "reserves," but usually the main line of battle constitutes the reserve; and in this connection I will state that the recent innovation introduced into the new infantry tactics by General Upton is admirable, for by it each regiment, brigade, and division deployed, sends forward as "skirmishers" the one man of each set of fours, to cover its own front, and these can be recalled or reenforced at pleasure by the bugle-signal.
Meador arrived on the field and at once ordered Wight and Hume to advance on Parker's left, which was promptly done, and that part of the enemy's picket-line was taken, with many prisoners; so that the temporary success of the enemy proved very expensive to him in the end. This was the only unprovoked assault that Laws had made since the campaign of the Summer before.
We had to buy the men food out of our own pockets, and to seize wagons in order to get our spare baggage taken to the camping ground which we at last found had been allotted to us. Once on the ground, we speedily got order out of confusion. Under Wood's eye the tents were put up in long streets, the picket-line of each troop stretching down its side of each street.
Boynton and his men were at the picket-line grooming horses, three hundred yards away at the moment, and the young brave mounted his pony and dared any one to take him, and rode singing defiantly down the snow-covered valley.
"I pointed towards the wood, and told him that I thought it was along the picket-line." "'It must have been, I suppose, said the Aid, in a drawling manner. 'The General was sure it was a rifle. The rest of us thought it a pistol shot, he said, as he rode off. "When he got into the wood I returned to the bullock, cursing Old Pigey's ears for want of experience in shots.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking